


Romancing a Stranger

by kali_asleep



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Eventual Fluff, F/M, Friendship, He's so in love, JUST, Mutual Pining, Pining, Unrequited Love, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6603895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/pseuds/kali_asleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See, the thing is, the last month has found Chat sat in Marinette’s bedroom nearly every night. What had started as an anomaly - he’d stopped on her balcony one night to take a quick mid-patrol break - has become a habit he doesn’t dare break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Romancing a Stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAmazingAl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAmazingAl/gifts).



> Written after a request by the ever-tempting Shadybug, loosely based on the song "Romancing a Stranger" by The Reign of Kindo.

 

…

_“O, were I a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!” - Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii._ **  
**

…

In the red-gold of the setting sun, Marinette becomes _fire_. She glows as she swirls around the dress form, lifting the skirt to show off a particularly tricky hem, or running a finger along the half-completed beading at the bodice. A smile lights her face as her words flow, smooth, easy. From his place on the edge of the chaise lounge, Chat _smolders_.

It’s something that’s escalated from minor concern to full blown problem. See, the thing is, the last month has found Chat sat in Marinette’s bedroom nearly every night. What had started as an anomaly - he’d stopped on her balcony one night to take a quick mid-patrol break - has become a habit he doesn’t dare break.

“You’ll look beautiful,” he breathes.

Marinette purses her lips and shoots him a look before waving away his words, dismissive.

“I can’t believe what I was thinking, going with this dark of a blue in Spring,” she says, turning her critical eye back to the gown, “Even with the overlay, it’s decidedly more of a Fall look.”

“You’ll look like the night sky.”

“More like a black hole,” she retorts.

Chat would love to argue, but if there’s anything he’s learned about Marinette in his frequent visits, it’s that she’s an immovable object when it comes to her own self-esteem. He is hardly an unstoppable force, not when she can still him with a single glance.

Marinette crosses the room, the sway of her hips hypnotizing as she approaches him. Claws find their way into the sides of this thighs as he strains not to reach out and touch her. She’s as appealing in sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt as he imagines she’d be in that dress. She plops down next to him and immediately begins rearranging them both. A few feet in the ribs later, Marinette is sprawled out over most of the chaise with her legs stretched over Chat’s lap. The smile she shoots his way is almost as warm as his cheeks.

“I wish I could take you to Spring Formal,” she says, “A friend date is better than no date at all.”

The mask isn’t enough to cover his flinch, but Marinette’s gaze has already turned back to the dress. How easy it must be, for her to say something like that, so casual, so offhand. Like Chat isn’t hanging onto every word, waiting for the moment that Marinette will _mean_ it. Waiting for Marinette to realize that _he_ means it.

“Surely you’re not going alone, Princess?”

Marinette’s eyes flick to the floor. Her words are more sigh than syllable when she says, “I considered asking my classmate, you know-”

Oh, he knows. With tightening chest and acrid gut, Chat knows _all_ about Marinette’s crush.

A slender hand comes up to cup her cheek; he bites the inside of his. And doesn’t that make him Romeo? Young, brash, and miserably in love with a girl he isn’t supposed to love. The metaphor doesn’t pan out quite the way he’d like. She doesn’t love him back. It’s a tragedy of a different scope and scale.

“But I don’t think he’d say yes,” she continues, “and I don’t think I could survive the humiliation.”

They’ve had it out before, the last time Chat brought up how much of an _idiot_ the boy of her affections must be, to not notice her. She’d gone red and promptly kicked him out, and he’d decided that he’d eat his words for an eternity to keep that from happening again. As such, he chooses his next ones wisely.

“I have no doubts he’ll demand a dance the moment he sees you in that.”

And he would, if it were him. For not the first time, Chat finds himself cursing the very idea of Adrien Agreste, golden boy and model extraordinaire, and his endless work. Adrien Agreste would dance with Marinette in a heartbeat, but Adrien Agreste would be in Milan on the night of Spring Formal. Instead, he’s left to the mercy of the _other man_ , the one who will no doubt be swept away the moment Marinette appears.

He’s drawn back by Marinette’s breathy chuckle.

“Yeah, sure, he’d ask me to dance, and I’d promptly fall flat on my face, or trip over my feet, or, I don’t know - spill punch all over his suit.”

He’d be _thrilled_ if any of those things happened to him, just to be with Marinette that night. Even embarrassed was becoming on her face. He’s convinced that, given the chance, Adrien could coax out the same Marinette that Chat is privy to. Maybe Marinette would even learn to like Adrien, like him in the way she seemingly refused to like Chat. But he won’t be getting that chance. So all he has left is-

“Dance with me.”

For the first time all night, it feels like Marinette really _looks_ at him. Her eyes narrow as she take him in, studying his face.

“You’re not serious, Kitty.”

“ _Au contraire_ , Princess, I’m quite serious. Believe it or not, this alleycat is pretty limber on two paws. You’re worried about goofing up in front of your Mystery Man? I can help you. Practice dancing, I mean.”

Chat slides her legs off of his lap and stands. With a flourish, he bows before her, offering a hand.

“We don’t have any music,” she protests.

He smirks and jabs a thumb towards her desk. “We live in the age of the internet - we have more music than we know what to do with. Indulge a poor cat?”

Marinette groans the entire time, but she stands and takes his hand. He gives her a ridiculous eyebrow waggle, and her complaints and laughter mingle.

Never before has he so loved and hated his suit. He can’t feel the softness of her shirt as he places a hand on her lower back, but it’s only his gloves that keeps the sliver of skin just above the waist of her sweatpants from melting him on contact. With a pout, Marinette places one hand on each shoulder.

“You’ve got to be _kitten_ me,” she mutters, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“That was _pawful_.”

Marinette smiles up at him. Such a look shouldn’t sting, but it does: it’s so comfortable, so simple and content. When she looks at him, it lacks the fire, lacks the need he knows reads in his own face.

“Learned it from you. Looks like the student has become the master,” she says.

“You’ve always been the master,” Chat says, and there are one million other words behind that phrase, one million words that fall flat before they reach her ears.

“That’s right!”

In the end, they abandon music all together. Marinette’s hands shift from his shoulders to loop around his neck, like she has no idea how much it kills him to have her pressed even closer. They dance to a rhythm Chat sets: a soft, erratic sort of swing punctuated by spins and hops and every sort of ridiculous thing he can do to make her laugh. His pulse is the padding of her bare feet and the way she giggles his name when he dips her low. They won’t dance forever - she won’t let him - and when they’re done, she’ll pat him on the head and give him that friendly smile and send him on his way. But for right now, Chat holds her to his chest and sways.


	2. Distance [Fonder]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s during the third or fourth round of scrolling through the pictures that he notices: at no time is Marinette dancing with anyone else.

Adrien must spend more time stealing glances at Marinette than he thought, because when he texts Nino a (he thought) very innocent ‘ _Hey send me pics of you guys from forma_ l’, almost all of the pictures he gets are of _her_. And sure, Nino and Alya and some of their other classmates are thrown into the shots, but as he scrolls back and forth through Nino’s messages it feels like he’s drowning in a sea of black and blue ( _later, with every aching clench of his heart, he’d realize she wasn’t the only thing decked in those colors_ ). **  
**

She’s not just beautiful; through the grainy low-light pictures of Nino’s phone camera, Marinette stuns. The dress looks even better than it did on the form, a two-layered piece designed to make Marinette look like she’d just stepped off of some ethereal plane. The under layer of the dress cinches at the waist and falls above the knees, leaving miles of bare leg to admire. The outer layer, sheer and diaphanous, clouds fetchingly around her bust and then swirls down around her legs, parting in the middle to allow for both movement and style. It’s fashionable and tasteful, and while Adrien has seen more revealing outfits on the runway before, nothing has made him burn like he burns now.

In more than one picture she dangles off of Alya’s shoulder, lips parted in a laugh he swears he can hear through the screen. There are candid smiles and customary pouts - he can’t stand how expressive she is. For the first half of the pictures, her hair cascades to her shoulders in soft curls, but after a while, she must have decided to put her hair up. He spends far too long thinking of when his fingers would have failed him first: in struggling not to twine themselves through her curls, or in trying to keep from running back and forth along her bare, freckled shoulders.

Adrien manages one coherent _‘Thanks’_ to Nino, for which he receives about eight hundred winky face and fire emojis. Officially called out, Adrien buries his face in the overstuffed hotel pillow and groans. The pressed white linen sheets, fine quality, high thread count, scratch and cling at his heated skin. There’s no position on the unfamiliar bed that he can find to get comfortable. He flops onto his stomach, then back onto his back to look through the pictures again.

He’s got it bad, and he’s got four more days in Milan.

…

It’s during the third or fourth round of scrolling through the pictures that he notices: at no time is Marinette dancing with anyone else.

…

After two more days of agony, Adrien decides that resolve and patience are words for someone who has never been in love before, and lets himself look through the pictures again. It’s a downward spiral from there, if he’s being honest. He’s never had a picture of Marinette before - he’d tried to get a selfie together once as Chat and had been lectured on something about ‘superhero responsibilities’ instead, and he’s never worked up the nerve as Adrien. But now he has a deluge of pictures.

The time in-between shoots would drag on without them. He sets his favorite of the pictures of her as his lock screen, and another favorite as his background (but who is he kidding - they’re all his favorites). The debate over whether it was appropriate or not to have pictures of a girl he wasn’t even dating splashed over his phone is quickly quelled by the bitter reminder to himself that the chances Marinette would ever be close enough to him to see his phone were next to none. So he indulges himself in getting to see her every time he checks the time or gets a text.

For the next two days, he gets teased by the tan, leggy models he works alongside. The women come up behind him in the makeup tent and drape their arms around his neck, giggling and cooing, “ _O, micetto,_ ” when he looks at his phone. Alessa goes on and on about the first time _she_ ever fell madly in love, while Febe pulls him aside and gives him a much worldlier version of the birds and the bees talk his father had (haltingly, with scant eye contact) given him when he started at François-Dupont.

He basks in their teasing and sisterly advice, relishing in how they defend him whenever the photographer snaps at him.

“Don’t hassle the boy!” Febe spits when the photographer asks for a pout, “He’s young and lovestruck, let him glow!”

There’s maybe a two year difference between the two of them - he doesn’t know how Febe gets away with calling him young, but he appreciates the sentiment. Alessa backs her up later, when a complaint is levied about the casual set of his shoulders. All around him spins the word: ‘love, love, love’, on the lips of the ladies at his side, in the reflection on the camera lens, across his skin as the setting sun brushes him in gold. And for a full forty-eight hours, he doesn’t have to deny it.

Chat Noir had, for years, meant freedom. It meant being who he wanted to be, acting the way he wanted to act, feeling what he wanted to feel. But now, as Febe reaches over and spears a piece of asparagus from his salad, and Alessa ruffles his hair and demands to see ‘the pretty girl who’s captured the heart of our _gattino_ ’ for the third time, Adrien wonders if this is really what it feels like to live without a mask.

…

On the plane, he changes his phone background back to the default picture.

…

“Good to see you back, Kitty.”

The warmth in Ladybug’s voice is so rich, it’s like taking a shot of liquid sunshine. It heats his throat and swirls in his stomach before settling into his bones with a low thrum of contentment.

He looks up to see her delicately scaling down the upper portion of the roof they’d arranged to meet on. She swings down the final few feet and meets him halfway across the roof in a crushing hug.

“Miss me, My Lady?” he purrs.

Chat loves Ladybug, and he always will: the way the moon loves the sun for giving the moon its light; the way the leaf loves the wind that carries it far from its branches. But his infatuation for his partner has mellowed in the last few months. It’s another pair of blue eyes, another pair of strong arms, he’d like to be wrapped up in now.

She leans back but doesn’t let go, and looks up at him. Maybe it’s the dark, or exertion from her descent, but the plush skin just beyond the line of her mask seems flushed. It takes a moment for her to respond.

“Paris wasn’t the same without you.”

He’s certain Ladybug has never looked at him like this before. Her chin tilts down and her lips part as she looks up at him. She then glances away, the darkness on her cheeks deepening. There’s no controlling the shiver that tickles down his spine.

“Well then, I suppose we ought to let Paris know I’m back, don’t you think?”

…

It’s past midnight when he lands on Marinette’s balcony, yet her lights are still on. Never before has he dropped by so late.

He couldn’t help it. The entire patrol had been a failed exercise in focus, and by the end of it, he was so antsy for the night to be over that Chat had half-danced through his conversation with Ladybug about upcoming meetings. She’d laughed from the gut when she noticed his anxious wiggle, doubling over and then swinging away with a chuckled farewell.

Chat bends over the trapdoor leading from balcony to room and readies a knock. He has just enough time to leap back and dodge getting hit in the face when the trapdoor flings open. A head pops out, followed by a soft laugh.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Marinette murmurs. She stares up at him, chest rising and falling with heavy breath. When she smiles, her teeth catch along her bottom lip.

He circles around and leans in, so that he’s bent over her. His pulse explodes in his ears with the force of a pressure delayed for far too long. There’s no helping the grin that takes over his face.

“Miss me, Princess?”

He’s certain Marinette has never looked at him like this before. Her teeth push further into her bottom lip and her eyes flutter shut for a heartbeat. With open arms, she reaches up and out for him, beckoning him into her embrace.

The tight squeeze of her hug is expected. Less so is the way Marinette wraps her arms around his waist and hauls him down through the trapdoor entrance. It’s by merit of his quick reflexes that he doesn’t knock his head on the edges of the opening or crush her underneath him; Chat instead bounces once, twice on her mattress, the force of the short fall still knocking the breath from him.

“That was a little childish,” Chat huffs. He sits up, awareness of his existence in her bed putting him on edge. Marinette’s arms hold fast around his waist.

She is so, so warm. For a moment Chat lets himself think their hearts pound in sync. He’s closer to her than he ever has been before - perhaps even close enough to tell. Sitting with her side pressed to his, on her bed, Marinette pulls tight her embrace and tucks her face into his chest.

“I did miss you,” comes the muffled reply.

For the first time ever, Chat truly gives in. He trails his hands along her back and then catches her in his arms. Working in tandem, they draw each other close.

“I missed you too,” he breathes.

Chat holds her and is held for what feels like an eternity. It’s still not long enough. He could listen to her inhale and exhale, feel the rise and fall of her chest, and never tire of it. Unimpeded, Chat plants his face in her hair and catches the scent of her: sweat and cinnamon, with perhaps a dry hint of flour.

Another first: Chat is the first to break their closeness. With a sigh, he raises his head and nudges her until she looks up at him.

“And did you enjoy the ball?”

The question seems to confuse her. Marinette blinks and her brow dips, gaze distant as she ponders.

“The Spring Formal?”

“Oh! Oh yeah, that.”

The dismissive tone is hard to believe - Marinette had talked about the dance for *weeks*, not to mention had spent a few good months laboring over her dress. He’d expected news of the formal to be the first thing out of her mouth the moment he showed up.

“Did you have a good time?” he prompts again.

Once more, an unusual reaction. Her eyes slide to the side, engrossed in her pink comforter.

“It was nice.”

“And…?”

“Nothing went wrong with the dress.”

Well of course he knew all of that - he’d seen just how spectacularly the dress held up. Chat was more curious about what he hadn’t seen.

“And did you sweep your Prince off of his unobservant feet?”

He keeps his voice light, playful, and free of implication. Chat, or more, Adrien, was exceptional in his ability to invoke neutral.

Instead of an immediate answer, Marinette gives his heart a painful whump by running a thumb over a crease in his suit at the knee. She toys with the fabric and keeps the blue of her eyes from him. Uncertain, Chat slides his arms from her back to shoulders, putting even more space between them.

His stomach churns over the possibility that he hadn’t been as subtle as he thought. Is that guilt that curls at her fingers? Discomfort, or remorse that rests her hand on his knee? Marinette is about to tell him, in her firm, considerate way, that she had the night of her dreams; that the boy she’s in love with has wised up and returns her feelings.

“He wasn’t there,” she says instead, and if Chat weren’t nestled and seated in her bed, he would have been on his ass when his legs gave out.

Because she says it like an afterthought, like the words hold no more weight than the air it took to procure them. Her fingers go back to plucking at his suit.

“It’s funny…” she starts, “From the Ladyblog, I knew you were away, but…”

She hasn’t looked back up at him yet.

“I-I kept, ah, I kept thinking, and it was so stu-stil-silly, but I kept thinking that maybe you’d show up. To the dance. Which is dumb because you’re a superhero but…”

The moment he gets home, Marinette is reclaiming her place as his phone background. And his lock screen. Perhaps he’ll dare to place her visage on each of his computer monitors, modern-day shrine to the icon of his affections (Nathalie wouldn’t say a thing).

“Marinette…”

He wills every wish into one word.

Much of the blue of her eyes is swallowed up in black pupil. No wonder - it’s past midnight, and the little bedside lamp doesn’t do much to fight back the dim.

One word isn’t enough. He has hundreds of them, thousands; four days, four weeks worth of words that clutter up his tongue and get backed up at his teeth.

“Silly, right?” she says in his silence.

Chat could tell her. Inches from her lips, he wouldn’t even have to _say_ it. His arms are still around her neck. It would be nothing, to pull her close, to see if the sweet and spice of her words is a permanent taste on her tongue.

Chat could tell her. But where does he go, if she turns him away? The trapdoor looms above them, suddenly menacing. He is content sat in her bed, content with her hand on his knee. And maybe he can even convince himself that he’s content with stolen pictures on his phone, and a smile that means nothing more than friendship but is meant only for him.

Reaching up, he cups her cheek in his hand and shakes his head.

“Not at all, Princess. The only thing silly is the fact that you _purr_ - _cats_ -stinated on inviting me in the first place.”

Marinette rolls her eyes and shakes her head. She crosses her arms over her chest, indignant, and he lets his body mourn the loss of her touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? This was kind of not sad?
> 
> yfip @ brettanomycroft.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Sign the petition to take away my fluff card at brettanomycroft.tumblr.com


End file.
